Phoning it in 4

"Is he ever going to stop cussing?" I ask.

"Not till he runs out of breath," a dark haired girl answers.

"Or you feed him," another boy adds.

"Murph, toss him some food," I call out causing the group of heavily armed children to spin around and finally take note of the dozens of floating fish and large pile of gear.

"Holy shit, dude!" a kid with dirty blonde hair exclaims as he notices Murphy.

Murphy drops a box of twinkies on the cursing boy who suddenly shuts up.

"You hit the motherlode here," the blonde boy says. "I don't suppose you'd care to share?" he asks hopefully.

"There's way too much for just me," I reply. "Help yourselves."

"Dude, seriously?" someone asks in shock.

"Just don't get into my backpack," I tell him.

The kids dive into the supplies and quickly replace a lot of their old or worn equipment and gear. All in all it takes nearly half an hour before they come up for air.

"Leo, make with the introductions already," a dark haired kid orders.

The polite blond haired boy sighs and begins to introduce the group to me. Most of them are just entering their teens or are a bit younger, all of them are wearing heavily worn camo gear, carrying a large assortment of weapons, and all of them look like they could use a hot bath and a lot of hot meals.

"Is there a bathroom in here?" a dark haired girl named Wendy asks.

"If not, the store next to us is a Bed, Bath, and Beyond," Eric offers. "I can escort furburger there through the vents."

"Stop calling me that," Wendy says rolling her eyes like it's an old joke between the two.

Murphy makes lightsaber noises and mimes cutting a hole through the wall.

"What is he a mutant of?" a red haired girl with the imaginative name of Red asked.

"And how is there floating fish holograms everywhere?" Stan asks suspiciously. "This is seriously freaky."

"If I'm dreaming let me know now," Eric says, "Cause I want a chance to get in a threesome before I wake up."

Bebe laughs. "Keep dreaming Eric. We either need more girls or for a couple of the guys to turn gay before that happens."

Eric turns to Leo. "Dude, I don't mean to sound queer or nothing, but I think Craig has a sweet ass and he's been checking you out."

Silence holds for a moment before everyone busts out laughing.

"Nah, but seriously, dude. What's up?" Eric asks.

"Me and my dog aren't from around here and my fish learned astral projection," I reply.

Everyone pauses and then looks towards Leo, who looks thoughtful for a moment before saying, "Ain't no way a machine could come up with something like that, he's safe fellas."

A tension I hadn't noticed seemed to go out of the group and there was a lot of clicks as safeties were engaged and weapons holstered. I can't believe the kids were so smooth I never noticed they were on a hair trigger to cut me down.

"I'm getting the others," Eric says climbing on top of a bookcase and boosting Kenny into the vent ahead of him, so he could pull him up.

"Others?" I ask.

"We left our injured two stores to the right," Leo explains. "It's a bit difficult to move around, so they guard our supplies."

"A hole in the wall would be easier to move through than the vents," I tell him, opening my backpack and reaching into a Star Wars novel inside of it.

Murphy stares at the lightsaber in my hand like a dog would stare at a stick, the kids recognize it as well.

"No freakin' way!" Red says.

I grin and activate it causing a four foot green energy blade to appear with a familiar sound. "let's make some doors."

"At least we don't have to worry about cutting any live wires or gas lines," Craig offers, as I pick a clear spot and quickly cut a five by three foot section of wall out and push it inwards.

Wendy and Red empty their canteens on a pair of dirty towels and use them to extinguish any flames or embers before Stan drags the debris out of the way.

It's rather obvious this group has been together for a long time and is very good at improvising. Hell, I didn't even consider that a lightsaber could start a fire cutting through a wall and they were already preparing for it to happen. These kids are seriously impressing me.

"Comic book store," Leo notes as we walk through the darkened store, dust everywhere but the store interior completely untouched.

A vent overhead pops open and Eric sticks his head out. "What the fuck?!"

"Lightsaber," Leo tells him, waving me to the next wall.

"Let me warn them first," Eric says before vanishing back into the vent.

"Probably a good idea," Leo agrees. "Jimmy can be a bit trigger happy."

"So... how far away are you from?" Bebe asks.

"Far enough I have no idea what's going on or what the whole robot thing is about," I admit.

"A galaxy far, far away?" Wendy jokes.

"That's not too far off," I admit. "More... sideways through time."

"I'd say you were full of shit, but you're way too strange to be from around here," Stan says. "Kyle, you want to give him the run down?"

"Sure," Kyle says. "Robot uprising, almost everyone dies from a nuclear exchange, Red plague kills off most of the adults and sterilizes everyone that's left. We'd just entered the fifth grade and were on a field trip. Our bus broke down inside a tunnel, saving us all during the nuclear exchange. So, we returned home, picked up a couple of people, and spent the next handful of years scavenging."

"We've had some laughs along the way," Leo points out, "but yeah, it's a heaping pile of suck."

"I don't suppose you have a way back to where you come from that seats a dozen?" Bebe asked hopefully.

I cut a hole in the wall and the two girls quickly smother the embers. "Yeah, I just need to rest first." I turn off the lightsaber and pretend to put it in my backpack while putting it back in a book. Leaving a lightsaber out where Murphy can get his hands on it would be beyond stupid.

Kenny and Eric introduce me to a girl named Karen who is my apparent age, with burn scars covering the left half her of her face and missing her left arm as well, a boy with metal braces on his limbs named Jimmy who stutters a lot, and a girl who is at least fifteen and has a splint on her right leg but otherwise seems fine named Shelly.

"You can get us out of here?" Leo asks intently.

"Easy as I got here, but I was aiming for some place way different, so there's no guarantee we won't end up some place worse," I warn them.

There's a lot of laughter that takes some time to die out.

"It's hard to imagine a place worse than this," Kenny says speaking for the group.

"Yeah, probably easy to find a brighter world," I said thoughtfully. I can feel the path back to the world we'd just left, it's a bit distant but easy enough to reach, it's traveling to new places that is hard.

"Can you cut a hole into Bed, Bath, and Beyond?" Bebe asks. "I'd like to sleep in a bed if possible."

"Sure," I agree, and with a little help we get the entire group back to the bookstore. Their supplies don't amount to much and were probably just an excuse to keep their injured out of harm's way.

"Where'd you get all the gear?" Shelly asks as I cut a hole into the next store and most of the group goes to examine it.

"I pulled it out of a magazine," I tell her not seeing a reason to lie and gaining a confused look from her.

"Like Paula the Pretty Princess?" Karen asks excitedly digging in her backpack and pulling out an old beat up magazine slash toy advertisement for an American knock off of Sailor Moon.

"I just reach in and pull stuff out," I explain. "The more powerful it is the more effort it takes."

"My favorite is the magic heart necklace she wears," Karen said opening the magazine to a well worn page. "It can heal any wounds, even old ones once a day!"

"Life doesn't work like that kiddo," Shelly says with a frown and then more tenderly, "sometimes you get hurt and you just have to go on."

Karen isn't listening as she runs her finger over the picture of a heart shaped jewel on a silver necklace. "It can even heal missing limbs."

I reach into the picture and whatever Shelly was about to say is lost as she stares open mouthed at the sight of my arm going into a physical object. The necklace is warm in my grasp and feels like it weighs a ton as I pull it towards me. Sweat begins to drip down my face and I can feel the pages of the magazine start to char as I pull. "Fuck!" I shout as it burns my hand and I drop it, but Karen's one hand snatches it out of midair before it can fall back inside the picture.

"Only the pure of heart can hold it," Karen says apologetically as her magazine crumbles into ash.

"What the fuck, dude?" Kenny demands as everyone has returned at my shout to see Karen holding a glowing jewel in her hand.

"But if someone who is pure of heart picks it up they are given a choice, to become beautiful, all their injured and imperfections healed, or to heal everyone around them," Karen says and a flash of white light blinds everyone.

The pain in my hand vanishes and as Karen grins, completely unchanged.

"B-but you could have been healed!" Bebe complains as she recovers. "You could have been beautiful!"

"Shut up, bitch!" Kenny growls at her. "She is beautiful!"

"I mean, we would have healed anyway, this was her shot at healing herself!" Bebe snaps at him. "I want my friends fucking perfect and a one shot heal spell could have healed her!"

Karen laughs and Eric helps her put on the necklace. "Yeah, but I can heal you all once a day now. Healing myself once is a waste compared to that."

"Well, my nobility boner just red lined," Eric announced. "Anyone else? No, just me then?"

"Jimmy?" Karen asked as Jimmy wasn't removing his braces.

"Y-yeah?" he stuttered.

"Aren't you healed?" she asked.

"I w-w-wasn't injured," he stuttered out. "M-My prob-problems are gen-gen-gen-genetic."

"Oh," she said sadly.

"Ch-cheer up," Jimmy ordered her. "On-on-one out of a dozen is d-damn good."

"Anyone here read Animorphs?" I asked pulling out the small blue cube. "It can fix Karen and, with a little fudging, Jimmy as well." What Karen did impressed me, and I can't let that kind of nobility go unrewarded.

"Are we sure I'm not just dreaming this?" Eric asked once more.

"You still ain't getting a threesome, so I think this is all real," Leo says cheerfully.

"Wait, the new standard for determining reality is me not getting my threesome?!" Eric demands.

"Yep," Shelly agrees as everyone nods.

"You guys suck!" Eric says shaking his head, before everyone bursts out laughing.

Typing by: Abyssal Angel